Iron and Faith
by vanillafluffy
Summary: The demon-killing knife plays a big part in Ruby's life. However, the story of the weapon is epic, and owes little to her. From its historic beginning to its endowment with Power, the blade has followed a very special bloodline. Events through Season 3.


**Iron and Faith**

In the days of the Roman Empire, a foot-soldier of the 10th Legion is issued a newly-forged spear. He carries the weapon through a long and difficult campaign in Germania. After many battles, the tip has dulled in color and the wooden shaft has weakened, but its point remains sharp. Longinus, a careful man, affixes the iron point onto a strong length of straight wood and continues to bear it beneath the Battle Eagle of the Legion.

The Empire is vast. Longinus is next stationed in a desert region at a city called Jerusalem, which he hates. He hails from the countryside north of Rome, and to him, this place is a wasteland. He vows to return home when his service ends, and live no more among strangers with their barbaric customs. These people don't seem to understand that to live under Roman rule is to achieve a civilized existence---all these desert tribes aspire to do is to quarrel with one another.

Longinus fulfills his responsibilities conscientiously. He patrols the streets, paces sentry duty at the Roman garrison, and occasionally supervises an execution detail. One of these stands out: The crucifixions of a couple petty thieves and a real piece of scum, a common craftsman who claims to be above Roman rule. The thieves are at least sensible enough to die in a timely manner; the agitator takes longer. It's been a long day on the hill of skulls. The sky overhead is pewter. The clouds hang low above them, seeming to compress the very air they breathe, and there's an ominous rumble of thunder.

To insure the convict's death---and to be done with this unpleasant assignment before the rain begins---Longinus rams his weapon into the rebel's side as lightning spears the sky. The man is dead now, by Mithras! Perhaps this will send a message to the local hotheads that Rome can't be trifled with. Of course, it begins to rain before they've gotten the bodies down---too bad he hadn't gutted the stupid peasant earlier.

Polishing the spear's tip later in the barracks, he notes no sign of rust, and, in fact, during the remainder of his career, it remains as bright as the day it was given to him. The iron spear serves Longinus well, and when he is released from his enlistment, he returns to the region of his birth. He takes the weapon with him; the quartermaster didn't demand its return, and a man can always find a use for a good weapon.

Longinus dies of old age, not wounds of battle, a peaceful death that takes the old warrior from his children and grandchildren. His spear is forgotten, until his grandson's grandson finds it. There are no family stories attached to the still-bright metal; as pragmatic as his great-great-grandsire, this Longinus sees it only as a useful piece of iron. There is plentiful game in the hills nearby. He barters with the local smith to form it into a blade so that when he kills a hare with his arrows, he can skin it on the spot.

The knife, which was once the spear Longinus carried, is passed down through his family for numerous generations. It's used for hunting, for carving, and sometimes it is used to kill again. Not all the legionnaire's descendants are content to farm the Tuscan countryside. They ford rivers, climb mountains. They do as people have always done and will always do: They make war, make love, make babies to carry on the family name, they look for new opportunities---although sometimes what they view as the way to achieve their ambition is not in their best interest.

These are dangerous times to be a young widow. The acreage which has been in her husband Denis's family for so many years is a tempting prize to be seized by people of higher rank and noble birth. His lady can't hope to hold onto it without divine help---but the Church teaches that the King is divinely appointed, so that's of no use---but there are other, darker powers she can appeal to. The blood she is washed in is as crimson as her name, and Ruby tingles with sweet, mysterious power like frost in her veins. This is how she will keep the estate intact until their son Samuel gains his majority. Her fear leaves her for the first time since she heard of Denis's death.

One of the nobles whose land borders hers is unexpectedly attentive. Ruby does her best to be gracious, but Audric is old enough to be her grandfather, and often advised Denis on matters of estate management. When his sagging, spotted hand strokes the smooth skin of her arm, she slaps it away. He is not pleased, and speaks with underlying menace that a young boy roaming freely about such a large estate might easily come to misadventure. Pale with fury, she orders him from her home and swears that if any harm comes to her son, she will see him dead.

A twelve-year old boy who has been accustomed to ride his pony throughout the countryside, to pick fruit in the orchards and to fish in the streams---such a boy will not endure sudden restrictions---for his own good or not---with any degree of placidity. Young Samuel, who still misses his father keenly, rails at his mother. She is shocked when he shouts at her in a temper, and locks him into his chamber until he learns to accept the confines of his new life. More fool she; Samuel fashions a rope of bed sheets and is gone the next morning.

Although Ruby sends the servants to seek him until night falls, her son remains missing. Her determined suitor returns after a second day of futile searching. Audric denies any knowledge of the boy's whereabouts, though he remarks that if their households were joined, it would add many more allies to the hunt. There was a time when he would already have had his people searching without thought of recompense.

Audric reaches out to fondle her breast with no more concern than he might show in selecting one of the pears on the sideboard. This succulent morsel will not be so easily plucked, however. She slaps his face and his angry growl brings his squire to the door in time to witness Ruby plunging her knife into the old man's chest.

Light blossoms from around the blade. Audric's eyes and mouth blaze forth with unearthly light, and for one triumphant moment, Ruby exults in her power. Then, the body slumps to the floor and the guard's outcry from the doorway brings her to her senses. She flees through the far door, hiding the guilty blade beneath a loose stone on the hearth of her private chamber, exchanging it for the jewels and coins concealed therein. A secret passageway leads from her chamber to the stillroom.

Ruby leaves the chateau under cover of darkness and bolts to the stables. There is no heir, nothing to keep her here, and perhaps in Paris she can find a wealthy, malleable patron. Only a few leagues down the road, she's caught. There is safety in numbers, or so they must think, for a crowd of thirty men on horseback surrounds her and hauls her to town...to gaol. Ruby is imprisoned as a murderess and a witch---the squire had clearly seen the unholy manner of Audric's demise. She is brought before a council of magistrates, tried, and sentenced to death. In the end, Ruby has nothing. Her fine gown is in rags, her mare, her money and jewels have been taken from her, her lands forfeit, her son gone who knows where.

Ruby tries to summon the power that slew Audric, but her efforts are fruitless. Her faith remains strong, though; the moment the energy spilled forth from Audric is bright in her memory, as bright as the flames she is consigned to. Whatever awaits her for her sins, she will overcome it. She will return to find Samuel, to regain her knife and exact vengeance against the ones who will acquire her family's holdings. As the searing orange fire consumes her, Ruby senses that this ending is only a beginning.

Samuel knows nothing of his mother's arrest or her grim fate. He is on an adventure, seeing the world beyond the fields and orchards of the family estate. Maybe someday he'll go back, he thinks as he tramps alongside a stream. When he's old enough that his mother won't be able to lock him in his room, when he can gallop the fastest charger in the stables without anyone protesting that he's "only" a child. When he has stories to tell, and can prove himself a hero....

For several days, he marches eastward, sleeping in haystacks and filching what food he can from gardens and market stalls. He sees a commotion ahead---it's a horse fair. He's spent much of his young life in the stables, learning the finer points of care and horsemanship from his father and the staff. Eagerly, Samuel wends his way through the throngs of people, admiring the many horses picketed about the broad meadow. There are heavy draft horses which could draw a wagon or carry an armored knight into battle, delicate palfreys suitable as ladies' mounts---one reminds him of his mother's favorite saddle mare, brown with a white stripe down her nose---a glossy black stallion who kicks and strains at his picket-pin until---

The loose horse knocks fair-goers aside, wheeling, lashing out at the crowd. One man is trampled beneath the stallion's hooves and lies unmoving on the grass. Unafraid, Samuel flings his cloak over the beast's head as it nears him. The black horse comes to a shuddering stop, and he catches hold of the dangling rope, moving to its head, murmuring reassuring words in a soothing tone, calming it. The trader who owns the stallion is impressed, all the more so when the boy mounts the now-quiet horse and puts it through its paces. Proving his equestrian skill, he finds work with the trader, who has a string of horses and is in need of good help.

The next few years see Samuel constantly moving from fair to marketplace to race meeting. From a scrawny runaway, he grows into a robust man who gallops fast horses and makes them dance gracefully at the touch of rein and leg. Seeking change, he volunteers to oversee a consignment of horses being shipped to a wealthy man abroad; he's learned enough English to get by and it's an adventure to leave the land of his birth.

In England, Samuel meets a pretty girl with cornflower-blue eyes and hair like goldenrod, the game-keeper's daughter. He remains in Hampshire, and with determination, works his way to the post of stable-master on the large estate. It doesn't bother him that he once stood to inherit such an estate of his own; here he's free to ride and train the fine horses in his charge without worrying about fancy clothes and fine manners. He is content with his lot in life.

He and his golden-haired wife beget children and they beget still more. One of Samuel the stable-master's grandsons is apprenticed to a mason. His first task is to shape granite blocks...a chore he regards with lackluster enthusiasm. Any fool with a hammer and chisel could do this repetitive labor. Bored, he transforms one block into a grey rabbit so lifelike in the grass at twilight that his master tries to bag it for stew. From that day on, John's talents are channeled into duties he finds more agreeable.

By the culmination of his apprenticeship, John is a gifted stone carver, much in demand. His work ornaments noble houses and mausoleums, private chapels and crypts. He is one of many who are hired to help craft a mighty cathedral to house the shrine of St. Swithun. Most of his life is devoted to this divine cause. Such is his pride in this great work that when census demands more than his baptismal name, he proclaims his family name 'Winchester'.

Years become decades, decades accumulate into centuries. A New World is discovered, a savage land that needs adventurous men to explore it. The Winchesters, descended from a legionnaire who also saw strange, faraway lands, are among the bold souls who go forth to the new continent. As the first Winchester named himself for the great cathedral he helped to create, so his distant offspring carry their shared name and bestow it freely upon the frontier: A dozen states have towns named Winchester.

Time passes differently for Ruby in the dimension of pain and ugliness that is Hell. She has one slight advantage over most of her fellow sufferers: She came of her own free will. Which is not to say that she can leave of her own free will---no, Hell doesn't work that way---but it spares her a few millennia of excruciating torture. She isn't spared completely---again, Hell doesn't work that way---but after a nominal sentence on the rack, she's…adopted…by a patron who makes old Audric seem like a handsome young prince.

Azazel is one of the Old Ones who has reigned in Hell since the Fall. He can come and go at will, and he does. He brings back word of human explorations, of a vast new paradise full of riches. He confides in Ruby, grandiose plans for a demon army---but she knows better than to express such opinions. It comes to naught; the colony he sought to tempt and corrupt goes mad, running wildly into the forests, leaving no trace but a puzzle that makes him laugh as he tells her the tale: Croatoan was his nom du guerre.

Nearly two thousand years from the days of Longinus, the cycle is completed. Fifty generations later, a soldier of his blood fights a war in a faraway country called Vietnam. Like another of his forebears, his name is John Winchester, and he vows that when his service ends, he'll go back to the small community he hails from, and stay there.

Hell has other plans.

When Ruby claws her way through the portal in Wyoming, she's heard the name Winchester often from Azazel during the last few millennia---though she has no idea of its significance to her. She finds her chateau inhabited by despicable people. They know nothing about its history, or of what became of Ruby's bloodline.

Inhabiting the mistress of the house, Ruby retrieves her knife. How novel to have a body again! After fornicating with the man of the house, she dispatches him; it's not as satisfying as if she'd had him on her rack, but she's promised herself revenge all this time. Then, she performs a spell to find out what became of her child, and his children. With a shock, she looks at the fragment of map remaining and sees the name of the territory she fled through during her escape.

A soul that can survive a lengthy confinement in Hell and emerge rational belongs to a very stubborn individual indeed. Ruby is not about to relinquish her ancestral knife; it takes a certain amount of creativity to get it and herself to where she needs to be, but she accomplishes it with practiced guile, leaving the French meat-suit to face punishment while she hastens west.

The most potent ties to her son reside in the brothers Winchester…the same Winchesters who were at war with and eventually killed Azazel, she discovers, torn between annoyance and amusement. What tips the scales into dark mirth is the realization that one of them shares blood with her and with Azazel…and that his name is Samuel.

Her love has survived Hell, though it has been much twisted. She generously gives her knife to the last of her line, though their closeness worries her. The older one doesn't trust her, but Samuel---who calls himself Sam---is more open. When Dean sells his soul to save his brother, she's delighted. He'll learn so much---on both sides of the rack. Meanwhile, her Sam is safe, and now she has the perfect opportunity to teach him, to make him truly hers.

For a long, long time, she's had plans of her own; now there's nothing to stop her. It's as twisted as her love, but Ruby still has faith.


End file.
